This is a breakdown of the process of our last 13 weeks and how the development of this practice app went. I’ll cover different events, the process that we use and how to improve on other that may not have hit the mark. Plus some self-reflection of my own practices and my design intents that were drastically shaped by the busy past 13 weeks.

What went well and what could be better?

Client Communication and Delivery.

As this is a new type of project for us and a very different way of gathering the information to make the deliverable. We were able to structure our workflow and productivity around staggered info drops and meetings. As our implementation was a week to week prioritisation of task and important game element. When there were times we were spinning our wheels we were able to them work on less important elements so by the time we hit the next meeting we would have other things that had been worked on and consider. Despite several setbacks from both the client and on our end, we still were able to change up what we were doing over the project to still deliver the desired product that was something that adhered to the clients needs and expectations. We could have had more if all went smoothly, but is wasn’t like these events derailed us completely and meant that the project could not go head.

The amount of design and iteration over the course of the project.

With a small team of designers working different areas we were all able to focus on our work knowing that other elements of the project were being worked on. When we came together to present what we had worked on each of us could offer a genuine view of feedback as a clean pair of eyes to that content. I found that if you had involvement in the creation process, you would maybe not give a genuine opinion. Our team of designers don’t beat around how they feel about each other’s work, brutal honesty is something we have between each other and helps us stay grounded in our creative practice.

Work to changing work schedules and Ability to work around unforeseen interruption.

As mention above in “Client communication and delivery” the uncertain schedule and changing circumstances, be it client, team members, or severe weather in our case. Natural these events did impact on the flow and outcome of certain weeks during development, however, all members of our whole team were able to fill the needs and still have our project and process not suffer too heavily.

Team members all having a role to play.

Something that we did at the start of our project was assigning team members a role and sticking to this structure. This was something that was good for the team as a whole and to individual team members. Working in a group knowing you have other people relying on you to produce work is a great way to motivate work and members of a team. This means that you are not only letting yourself down but has a larger weighting on the impact of not doing the work need.

Miscommunication between sections in the team.

With this project, we split our designers and programmers so they can work on the different areas individually with regular communication with a member of the design team. This was a good thing for us designer so that we could collect all the information that we wanted from them, with it being related by one person to make sure that all our stories of information are the same. This was a great thing and worked well, however, it was not without its issues. As this was the only information coming from our department if there were any issues or misunderstandings with this information there was no way of double checking if this was the correct info until finding out it isn’t too late. Only once the programmers handed it back to us were we able to find it is wrong.

Being new to a work for a client.

Having to work to a client’s needs and expectations isn’t what is the issue, this and actually a great element of this project. I find that working with a client and the clients themselves both very good and an interesting experience. This meant however that we had to drastically change up our chain of events when working over the course of the project as the element of factoring in meeting with clients, adding in a different structure to test the app, and a different team dynamic as the team was a lot larger and broken into different areas, plus collaboration was something that worked very differently as well. Juggling all of these things normally can have its issues, but then having to take the clients info and relay this to all the others that were involved, add another layer or internal team communication than normal. Having a defined structure of command and flow or communication is the way to make sure that this is something that will not break down during a project.

Working in a small team of designers and all having a role to play was a good approach to our structure of sharing the design workload. Taking on the role of project manager was something to test my capabilities and to fill a role I believe other would rather not take. This had both its pros and con, the team was happy with me taking the role and our relationship between the team was solid. This wasn’t an issue for communication and interaction, but as I haven’t worked in this role intensively there was a lot of learning of how everyone works and what process will work for our need as we went along. Time of uncertainty may have been avoided if I were a bit more prepared for the situation having planned based on researched practices, instead of trying to do this research during the course of the project.

This was a project that I was able to focus on the design practices more than other elements, in what we worked on. This also allowed me to see and understand how my fellow developers work as well, as project manager this was a great help to better understand and know how to work with them to achieve a great working mindset with each other.

Working with so closely with the other designers made communication second nature and not something that we were aware of and just something that we did. At most points during the project at least 2 of our team of four known info about the third. This way others could speak for each other if they were unable to.

Over the course of the project, we worked to small work and iterate time frame, with week or two week time periods before milestones. This is something that in the future i will stay on top of and use for other projects as it is a great way to pick up on work that might not be heading in the right direction and allows for team members to stay busy and not feel like they are in too much of a down period before the next round of work.

On a personal standpoint, this is something that has made me focus more on the high priority tasks and designs so I could structure the project as a whole by thinking of the most important thing that everything relies on first and step down from that with tasks and task priorities.

Areas I have improved on this trimester and practices that I have begun to understand better are the of project management and the overall structure and flow of a project and how to better this in the future. The simple fact of this is repetition, working on more projects is something that will improve the method in which we produce a project whatever size it is. After this trimester I will be working on my Final Project unit but for me, it will be projects. I will be a designer on two of the projects being worked on. In these teams, I will be taking part in the project management and on the design of content and systems. This will allow for me to experience these roles and interactions.

Moving forward from this project I have learned a lot in regards to my process and ways I like to designs and help other during the course of a project, something I want to do more of on future projects. I hope to apply what I have taken away from this project to better my outcome and overall work practices.

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/final-studio-post-mortem-new-intellegence-practice-app/feed/0Screen Shot 2017-05-05 at 11.07.16 amacrompton360Project Analytics.https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/project-analytics/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/project-analytics/#respondMon, 01 May 2017 03:34:46 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=4507Tracking analytics is helpful information to have to be able to see how your product is being used and where you may be able to improve it. During our project, we came up with what analytics we wanted to track from our users over the durations of their time with the App. We implemented Google Firebase and Google BigQuery analytics tracking systems, to record the different types of data for us to use to further our app.

Firebase receives information from a device and sends the data to BigQuery. You are able to view basic analytics in Firebase (number of users, location, model and app versions). BigQuery gives access and the ability to gather custom events.

Analytics events typically aren’t real time. If a device is connected to the internet, it is possible that will upload batched events after hourly time periods.Firebase only updates at the end of each day so it can take 24 hours to see results. So this allows you the ability to track info over larger time periods if however, you are wanting the data the same day this is not ideal. You can, however, work this into a time schedule and would allow us to use info track on the next week’s work during development.

Here is the different information that we wanted to track from our users:

What amount of time are our users spending in exercises – This gives us an idea of how well users understand our interface or the possibly of where different questions that may need iterating to better understanding.

A number of incorrect answers the users receive.This also gives as the IDs of these wrong answers. Information gathered this way will show us if answers are worded confusingly. This could also help us identify if these are correct but might be showing as incorrect.

What version of the app they are running. This allows for us to address future bug fixes and make sure that error users are having are with the latest version of our app.

The model number and Android Version they are running? This will also help with bug fixing.

Location. While our perceivable testers are in Australia at the moment, this is somewhere that can allow for further expansion of the users.

This information gives us more insight into what devices and people are using to play our game. It also helps with bug testing and deciding what platforms to focus on. Firebase offers many other useful stats like active users, retention cohorts and specific stats on each event.

This query shows users completing exercises and is tracking what answers they submitted.

Once this app was rolled out to beta and had outside testers, it would then be downloaded per day as a .csv file. This would give us the ability to sort info and track down patterns on user’s behaviours and make changes as necessary when this is being used for a large amount

Thanks for reading

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/project-analytics/feed/0Web analytics conceptacrompton3601bd5cf4d96.png10cce29366.png46048f3e3fb30b110df601e1d8f3c8.pngTools of the Designerhttps://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/tools-of-the-designer/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/tools-of-the-designer/#respondWed, 26 Apr 2017 03:05:30 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=4276As a designer, you are only as good as the tools and resources at your disposal. Anything from project planning to the collaborators your employ to your projects cause, the better your understand and use your resource and the smoother your project will be.

Working with tools you have experimented with and have a good understanding of can improve the progress and day to day life of a project. Always use new tools and frameworks but make sure you are doing this when it is not going to impact the project. Researching different tools to fit a need is better at the time then trying to make your project fit your tools.

Interdisciplinary communication is now something that is becoming second nature over the course of my last few studio units at university. In the last trimester, this is something that has been front and centre of all our work and interaction on current projects. This is always something that done well is so helpful to a project’s success.

Studio

Tools

There were a few tools that we used that are commonplace in our industry, however, these are some that I want to highlight based on them being new or how we used them in different ways.

Marvel App.

Prototyping of our project was done in paper form and had its uses in the form of rapid prototyping. But as this project was going to be an app, paper prototyping helped with the visual iteration and flow. We looked at forms of digital prototyping so that we would get feed back on our app in a form it would be given to players. This allowed for early layout and interaction concept that we could bet feedback on. This tool also had the ability for multiple members to work in the project at the same time and not course conflicts in data or systems.

Client Resources

This wasn’t something that we chose as something we wanted to use, like other tools, but more something that we need to use to adhere to for the project intent. But in a way, this was a good thing that helped us decide on other tools and processes. Forcing us to design to a constraint is I think something that is easier to achieve and allow for a focused scope and direction.

Unity

This was a given when it comes to a tool, but this was something that we used in ways that I hadn’t before and in ways I will definitely use in the future. Instead of inputting info into unity directly, as this was something we would be processing a lot of. We come up with ways with our programmers to use CSV files that will read all the info from a shared document straight into the project. This allowed multiple people to edit and work at the same time so as project flow wouldn’t become an issue, also allowing for large amounts of data to bet transferred and processed quickly.

Communication tools (Discord)

Something that I looked into that has worked for me this trimester is organizing where and how i communicate with all the collaborators that i need to interact with. There are better places and programs that i could look into and learn, however, most my collaborators use this platform so I stuck with a program that was familiar. I looked into this program channels and privileges systems to allow for a different channel for the project. This allowing all them to have a place that wouldn’t be distracted of all other traffic on the site to better help with work flow. Let a designer only have access to a designer channel so that know where all the information reverent to them would be and make their life easy when looking for updates.

Interdisciplinary communication

Our project, to begin with, is working on an app with an external client. So this in itself has a large amount of communication with someone that isn’t in your field. So you need to structure your interaction with them in a way that is not to confuse them but also to get the information that is going to be helpful both for you and for the client to feel confident that you are to deliver what they are wanting.

This is something that has become its own area of consideration more than other projects, working a schedule around meets with a client and structuring work to the feedback from our client. This is something that when consider early is helpful in the early stages of a project, It will help the flow of the project and success of your outcomes. This also was a way we could focus on what was important to the project and also factor our client’s needs and concerns.

On top of this there was the flow on effect of passing on this information.

We would meet with the client and get info to progress with production

We would design and shape this infomation into design and interaction.

We then need to break this into the different areas of work needed.

Sound.

programming.

Visual design.

Interaction design.

This Information then would be passed on to different collaborators so as they can work on the content.

Audio designers.

Graphic designers.

programmers.

animators.

Something that is a great help and something that is overlooked when it comes to communication with of the areas of expertise is doing research on that area of work and practices. Looking into what different elements are called and common elements of a project that may have different words. Learning the language of a different discipline so that who you are talking to can easily understand what you are wanting from the on a project can sometimes be lost in translation between creative areas.

Over the last couple of months i have looked into a lot of different tools and methods of dealing with work flow and interaction between team members. I’m glad for the insight to a variety of different things i can use on future projects, and in doing this i now have different processes and considerations when planning and designing a project

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/tools-of-the-designer/feed/0Captureacrompton360web-design-tools.jpgsocial-media-talk-1024x853What is out there?https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/what-is-out-there/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/what-is-out-there/#respondTue, 25 Apr 2017 10:45:26 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=3771This will be a look at some apps that are on the market that consist of elements of design that we can draw inspiration from to use for our own app production. Here are a few examples, I will be looking at what “practices” they allow you to do, but also how these portray practice and how we can adapt what we are looking for in these existing forms.

Duolingo is an on the go approach to learning languages. This has some great design inspiration for progressing the player during the use of the app. This app was something that we looked into for inspiration on it intrinsic and extrinsic reward for players. I, however, was able to take away more from it in the aspect of how it works Instructional Design and Progression Design.

Duolingo breaks its questions up into short tasks under different categories that are your lessons, and these increase in difficulty as you progress through the language. It starts you with a simple question that relates to an image, “Which of these is the Dog?” so, with no knowledge of the language, you are looking a the dog image and seeing what the word for dog in that language. This is giving you infomation and is not expecting anything from you, this is the pattern for the first few lessons. It does this in different forms;

show you a sentence that you can touch and see what each individual word mean in English, then gets you to write the English sentence.

show images and pick the correct one.

or make a sentence out of words from the language you have already been shown and know.

The app, once you have done a few questions will flip what is expected of you. Instead of pick the image based on a word that is known, It gives you the image but now asks you writes the word. The app takes all the previous task and information and now expects you to give the info you have learnt. This is a great introduction to not only how the app works but how people work. By giving you the information in ways that are easily answered to then relying on the answers coming from retention of what has come before. But this app doesn’t do this the whole way through, the call and response style of the app is there, but is added to. After the first few lessons, they will start to give you new words and phrases but mix this up with what you have already learnt.

Let’s say you’re learning Irish and you know the word for boy and man (buachaill & fear) and the app are now teaching you apple and eat (úll and ltheann ). The app takes what you know and adds it to what you’re learning, this is expanding your knowledge and straightening what you know.

There are elements of progressional design and motivational design. I cover this in a blog on some other projects I’m working on here. This is something we are going to incorporate in our training app, to allow player feedback and drive to want to complete sections and replay to improve their skills.

Now I will look at an app that has a specific use instead of an app that fits into everyday life.

This is an app I looking into about decision making. This app helps you break down the decision-making process. This was something that we wanted to do with our project, breaking down what the player are practising and the info that the players are receiving at each stage of the app. To alleviate people being confused and overwhelmed with too many things at once. This was an app that we looked at and that helped us shape our design process.

This image above shows questions with text boxes. We considered having text input as an element to our app but when we consider this in relation to what analytics we would be recording or be getting back from our app we removed it. The text box element was something that we shelved, this then drove us to look at the design of questions and fixed information that we would display to the player. This helped us shape different areas of our app for the better and will allow for a cleaner look to the app and uniform input and feedback that was easy to understand for users and less work for tracking analytics.

Looking at what other products that are on the market in areas similar to your target are a great way to both see what is expected and also what you can do better or in different ways to make your app stand out in a unique way. Research is a great way to help improve and build your skill set of design methods.

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/what-is-out-there/feed/0Screen Shot 2017-04-25 at 8.47.00 pmacrompton360Captureduolingo_screenshots.pngethics-640x562screen696x696Instructional Designhttps://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/instructional-design/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/instructional-design/#respondMon, 24 Apr 2017 11:43:10 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=3999Instructional Design is something that I was aware of before I even knew this name. I would find myself playing games and picking up on instances when a game for teaching me something in a way that didn’t fell like I was being taught or be means of a tutorial.

Instructional design is something that can be delivered through a variety of ways. some that I have been looking into recently are environment and progression, I will explain what I mean by these.

Environmental

Having what you do in a level teach you of a mechanic or interaction that you, as a player can do. It’s one thing to write on the screen, press A to jump to tell players what they can do. This is something that is a simple solution to teach a player but can intrude on a game and make it feel like you just looking for the next textbox to tell you what to do.

A successful example of this is Play Dead Studio’s Limbo and Inside.

Both games have simple controls, but at no point do they tell you what these are when you start the game (if you are stuck is only when a prompt will show on screen). By the means of the level design, these games first obstacle is a ledge that is the height of the player that with no instruction, player natural will press the jump button and now know that this is something that thy can use to progress. This is then built upon each time the player is giving a bit of information they can then use in different situations.

First Inside Jump.

Progressional

This is something that I have been looking into this trimester as I have been working on a training app for a client. I have been looking into other apps that people use for different uses and how they progress in them based on what or what they feel rewarded.

Methods to better a that of Instructional design that has been researched and applied to our app are that of:

I have utilised these methods to in my level design for a project called ParaLeap. A game being made from a fellow game dev and friend Alex Muir. He was keen in allow me to work on the sections of this presacral generated runner. This has allowed me a good challenge and a great way to break my levels and interaction up into playable and effect chunks to help my instructional design.

I took the approach of breaking the concept for the section into three different stages;

Teach the Player

Allow to practice and be rewarded.

Challenge the player for reward.

Highlight The Core

The concept above was made to build on the switching mechanic which allow players to avoid obstacles and maintain their speed. I wanted a combination of switching and jumping to highlight these two core elements. The first step allows the player understand the basic action of the section (Jump the gap and switch to the backplane) to get the reward.
The second step takes the players knowledge of the jump and switch actions and allows them to practice and then tests them with a hint of a reward to extend the players skill and drive.
The final is now the platform to challenge the player by adding more of the same actions for players to test and want to improve their skill.

This section will show the players that doing the norm isn’t always the way the go if the player just falls down the gap they will lose speed. however is a player can time a jump so they land in the hole so they maintain speed.
Step 2 adds the reward for so the player is mixing up the actions and tempting players to risk it for the reward.
Step 3 again is now the challenge so the player by doing more than one late jump to test their skill.

These sections would be useless if you could have them come at you in any order. To help the intent of this design, each stage would have a percent of interaction. The first would be the only accessible stage with the chance of the next stage increasing after each interaction with the first step of the section. With the same happen when the players have experienced the second step, with only the third stage be giving to the player after several interactions with the first two.

Building these sections in a way with a progression that has players learning and understand what they can do with the first stage. This then gives the player a drive to achieve the next sections for the reward knowing what is possible. Players will then feel and want to take on the challenge of the third stage after being exposed to these first few stages after several plays of the game.

I hope to portry this in my future work as a developer.

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/instructional-design/feed/0qiwxscza_Instructional-Design-Series-Illoacrompton360Screen Shot 2017-04-22 at 11.37.11 am.pngScreen Shot 2017-04-22 at 12.00.47 pmarcs_model_components_table.jpgScreen Shot 2017-04-24 at 3.13.02 pmScreen Shot 2017-04-24 at 3.06.14 pmCapture rrCapture s.PNGSelling Yourself as A Producthttps://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/selling-yourself-as-a-product/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/selling-yourself-as-a-product/#respondTue, 18 Apr 2017 00:03:45 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=3988A Business Model on selling your skills as a service. Starting my course I was always thinking of making a project, or eventually a product. Something that didn’t occur to me was the possibilities of doing what I have learned to help others who want a product that I’m able to produce. Making something for people that are not in this industry is a real market, I always looked for how I could fit into this industry and not necessarily how I can give other the access to this industry.

Using a model that I and my fellow developers worked over, we used this to construct a mock business, we looked at all the key elements that are needed to be considered when looking at such an endeavour.

Customer Segments

Value Propositions

Channels

Customer Relationships

Revenue Stream

Key Resources

Key Activities

Key Partners

Cost Structure

The sections above are all key in themselves and in relation to each other, identifying some and they help you focus your intent on the others. We have looked at this as our current project has us working for an external client to our university, so we have been structuring our work differently to that of making a game for personal reasons.

1 Customer Segments

Who are we creating value for? We considered what is the type of market we are looking to enter? What type of market could use our services? Looking at this from the smaller end of the industry as we would only be starting out as new developers, as we wouldn’t be looking at anything on a mass market scale.

With only a small team we would be looking for a smaller market, with a niche market would as our focus. This would have us looking to work for consultants in areas like advertising, local council or other markets that are looking for Customisable interactive fun experiences. As game designers, not everyone will want a video game but these skills used in designing can be used to make other digital interactive products

2 Value Propositions

What do we offer our clientele? Or, why is our product or service better than others?

As Game Developers, we can bring a very useful set of skills, that can be valuable to any industry. What we can offer to potential clientele is services of producing products that are focus around “play” and are highly Interactive and Customisable products, something that games offer more so than another medium.

Digital Design skills are highly sorted after by companies and industries which are the typical sources of our kind of contract work. These companies are well funded to support projects like this but may lack the knowledge. Meaning we would be able to produce a product to meet their expectation and value for money.

3 Channels

But how do you find your customers? We had to look at which Channels our Customer could be reached by looking at ways we could reach our target customers through industry related means and current avenues that we know.

We worked through what likely options a small team would have, looking at different types of work and outlined a process of places and interactions that:

Recognising our existing connections, those connections that have been gained through previous networking.

Engage in further networking opportunities, including attending trade shows and entering competitions that may be held by our potential clients.

We would arrange meetings in which potential contacts could be made with clients, starting the grounds for face-to-face meetings.

We would then look at contracts, where we would discuss constraints of contracts both for them and us.

With Delivery to our client to round it up. this would only be followed by updates or ongoing support from our group if this is something that is outlined in the contract (Which should be outlined to the client in the beginning of a project to help build forward and clear relations with your clients)

4 Customer Relationships

This for one is something you should do to guarantee a comfortable and stressless interaction over the course of a project. This makes your life a whole lot easier, It also means keeping this communication with your clients so they know their investment is well placed. As the process of these projects can take time to get right, you should explain this to someone that doesn’t know what is involved in the process and not keep your client in the dark.

Making it clear to your clients in initial contacts with them is a start point for good relations, and have regular face to face meets over the corse of a project is ideal too. Having a proof of the design early on will help you convince your client of your service. Having a period of design dev where you give the client something and see if they like it or want to continue. This is a point where they can pull out of an agreement and not feel ripped off if they have paid you for a heap of work that is not happening. This is a safeguard of both parties involved. This takes to considering revenue stream.

5 Revenue Stream

How are you getting paid? This would be something you work out in the contact stages of your agreement. This is something that should be worked out in great details so as it benefits all involved, payer and payee. We talked it over and agreed time for money is a very important factor.

We looked at a plausible scenario, that would have Milestone Payments which consist of being paid at set intervals, where a specified milestone would’ve been met and delivered to the client.

As we are working on a mobile app, something that was considered was ongoing support and upkeep of the product, this scenario could be if the client wanted their product to work on older or newer devices/platforms, which we would then have to cater for and we would offer additional cost for the client which would mean a stable and consistent flow of work for our team.

We have come to the Key Elements of the this structure, this is in the way of Activities we need to perform for our clients, the Key Resource that we would need so we can provide this to our clients and also our Key Partners that will give as the support we would need to make our jobs possible.

6 Key Resources

What resources, both personal and work related would be impacted on by this project?

Resources such as workspace and offices would be an eventual consideration, but a work from home approach to this would be a better start for a small team. Computers and software services would need to use for making the product.( Program engines, programming software, Source control).

Financial Support from bank loans and payments of things that will be needed for the project. You also need this for things that the client requests that are within reason throughout development. Manpower is a major part of the project. Having people actually making the product and using their own time. Their efforts will need to be considered in the way of salary.

7 Key Activities

What sorts of activities would be required of us by our client, and also those general activities that are typically carried out by similar teams, doing this kind of work in the industry? These are the activities that we would definitely carry out, and these should be expected of us, by our potential clients:

Performing the service we are offering to clients.

Regular meets with the clients to show progress and when you hit key milestones, to maintain good integration and communication.

Actively engaging in client and consumer relations, have and maintain good networking.

Collaboration with others to achieve a good product, make your life easier and builds a strong group of helpers.

Deliver the promised product, not doing this will not help your name as a company. Or your pockets.

Upkeep and ongoing support is a good way to build relation and show clients your dedicated to not only the product but to the people that want these products.

8 Key Partners

With whoever we collaborate with. we must ensure that we maintain relationships and active communication with all parties. Not only that of your client but with those who you may need for certain areas of the product.

These groups of potential partners, if we were to do this kind of contract work would be:

Collaborators (Graphic, Audio, Film, Animation)

Programmers (Software development, Servers, Code, Analytics)

Software Companies (Unity, Unreal, Apple, Android)

Accounting

Financial Institutions (Banks)

Legal Institutions (Contract Lawyers)

Platform Owners

Having these all these things in place may be a expect when you are starting out as a small or new company. However not having these in place may cost less money but if you have something goes wrong the cost of not having these in place will impact your company heavily.

9 Cost Structure

What are all of the things that will be needing to pay for before we are reimbursed?

Platform Owners/ Software Companies (The costs of releasing on certain devices, and in certain markets)

Legal Costs (Contract Lawyers)

Accounting

Platform Owners and Software Companies (The costs of releasing on certain devices, and in certain programs)

A Cost structure is something that should be looked into thoroughly and in great depth. Everything involved in a project will cost money and at times will cost amounts of money before you have the money to spend. So you will need to consider all the elements involved so that there will not be any unexpected expenses that will break a budget or leave you out of pocket. The project should not go ahead with these things outlined and understood by the team.

By going through this process and breakdown, I believe that a small business that specialises in this type of work outlined would not be as much as unachievable goals as I would have thought. However all involved would need to be dedicated and the right page to achieve a shared goal. Doing this task of identifying all the considerations for this type of goal has to help me start to visualise a future in the game industry that was not something that I consider day one of this course.

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/selling-yourself-as-a-product/feed/0Multi Level Marketingacrompton360a-new-business-model-a-new-structure-a-new-business-0Managing Methodologyhttps://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/managing-methodology/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/managing-methodology/#respondTue, 11 Apr 2017 00:55:55 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=3457After several projects, I have been involved in, This is the first that I have properly taken the role of project manager. This wasn’t my plan from the start but the best way to learn is to put you in a situation then manager as you go. So the methodology to use on a project isn’t something I know and have missed up in other projects I’ve worked on. To pick a methodology for this project I had to look at what information we had to work with, this in a way helped shape our pick too.

At the start, I focused on The Critical Path or Critical Chain;

As opposed to waterfall and agile project management, that focus more on schedules and tasks, the critical chain project management methodology is geared more towards solving resource problems. Each project has a certain set of core elements, called a critical chain (sometimes referred as critical path), that establish a project’s minimum timeline. The critical chain methodology devotes adequate resources to this critical chain while devoting enough resources to other tasks such that they can run concurrently, but still have enough of a buffer to reassign resources when needed. This setup is ideal for resource-heavy teams, or for those who have enough flexibility in their team members’ respective skill sets.

Using this methodology from the start and with what knowledge of the project we had, it worked for a short period of time, However, after reading over some documents, I come across Agile management and felt that this was a better representation of our processes.

Agile management, or agile process management, or simply agile refers to an iterative, incremental method of managing the design and build activities of engineering, information technology and other business areas that aim to provide new product or service development in a highly flexible and interactive manner; an example is its application in Scrum, an original form of agile software development.[1] It requires capable individuals from the relevant business, openness to consistent customer input, and management openness to non-hierarchical forms of leadership. [1] The Agile Manifesto, is centered on four values:

Communication with parties is more important than standard procedures and tools.

Focus on delivering a working application and less focus on providing thorough documentation.

As from the start of our project we have a timeline of milestones and of important events. From this, we have a rough flow of elements and the team were about to make a critical path of objects that were reliant of the previous. This slowly morphed into an Agile methodology. This was because, with this project we were not only working with the feedback of our lecturers, we are also receiving feedback and interaction with an external client. This had as working to individual deadlines, then meeting with our clients and reassessing our plan and then working to the next shared goal. Our external client New Intelligence, have their area of expertise they have to convey to us, and us to them as we are the one making their app, and we have to make this the focus of the app.

Our starting timeline and Critical Chain was used because we did have core elements that needed attention but we found out that these needed to be flexible. So we accounted for these changes from collaborators or meetings between New Intelligence by morphing into an agile methodology into our methodology this allowed focusing on delivering on the next core elements that needed addressing and when what was the more important change we task accordingly to meet this goal.

The critical chain methodology helps to identify the most urgent task and come up with a structure that we needed to follow. This is something that helped us in the early stages of our processes. But this was after some things needing to be shuffled to allow the project to still flow and work productively. We adopted agile so that we could change up our priority focus based on feedback and update on progress, whilst still assigning resources to other tasks that were worked on side by side without depending on each other to progress forward, like that of a critical path methodology.

To close on this I have learned a lot of valuable processes and practices that I will apply to my future work, and be able to better how we manage projects both on a small and larger scale Be factoring in the size of the project and what type of elements need to be achicement in a giving time frame

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/managing-methodology/feed/0project-management-manager-980x505acrompton360Critical-path-chartAgile.pngDesign through Prototypehttps://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/design-through-prototype/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/design-through-prototype/#respondMon, 03 Apr 2017 07:31:55 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=3429There are many ways that you can implement some prototyping and internal game testing for your own practices and with a team. Each of our team’s members went about designing and implementing our own sections of our current app project.The section for my primary focus is an exercise that allows for the practice an awareness of “Setting up a Room” for an interview.Other areas of design work for this project is looking into designing ways people can practice evaluating questions and situations as an observer.

When it comes to designing a concept or idea, being able to write a bunch of documents that say “X” is my idea is one thing, but you can refine this idea by visualising if this idea will work as a physical product by prototyping. Doing this as an individual is a way for you to make sure that your idea is achievable, but doing this in a group also has you getting immediate feedback on its functionality.

Our work area is well suited for this as it has a 4m whiteboard wall, to some that might mean nothing but it has become so useful in our design progress. With such a large space design can just flow and transform into creative things. The team and yourself can break everything down and scrap ideas ok idea one after another. the main thing that is a take away from this is prototyping can be done fast and consistently.

Prototyping in a paper from brings to light areas that you haven’t thought of and the element of getting someone to step through your or concept is a really helpful process. Once you have done this once you know have things that can shape another iteration, that you can do straight away.

The next step for this prototyping of my section of a room step was looked at and understood by my team and others that ran over my prototype, having more eyes of people from both inside and outside of design development. You want your product to be used by people so get all types of people to test or give feedback. This way you don’t loose time and effect and have to rework a bunch of digital work.

Making the room set up in the style of an isometric room with a simple style and easily understood, something that was consistently found from testers. having paper prototyped this initially we went about prototyping our whole app in a digital form. I look at this and how it’s helpful and what other products that I looked into for design, Here. But in short, this made testing and having people interact with your app in a form close to that of what is intended.

When it comes to making an exercise that has players looking a room and add and removing things to and from it the design about is something that people found a good and easily understandable.

The development tool above is where we transferred our paper prototypes into a digital format by using Marvel App. This online tool was relatively easy to learn in a short period of time. We put all of our ideas and designs together into a digital format which allowed us to exported to a mobile phone or internet browser.

These are simpler mockup app that allows you to prototype functionally for apps and all are worth looking at to see which works for you.

Having our app in a phone format became an excellent way to show our app to our stakeholder at our first skype call. Digital prototyping tools like this allow you to have something that is far more professional than just ideas on paper. We were able to step through the prototype thus far and demonstrate a solid idea. Having something with small functionality made it possible for the stakeholder to get a feel for what the app will be, we received positive impressions from the stakeholder who was happy with our progress and impressed by some of our designs for the practice app.

Room setup Testing.

With the use of the marvel prototyping program, I made an activity of setting up a room, removing elements from a room and arranging a room. These were all separate exercises during the paper prototyping and for the marvel app. This was something that was easily implemented for this prototype app. I did this to see if users would be able to understand and be able to navigate the exercises and complete the tasks asked of the users.

After testing this with users in the marvel app. I found users went through the exercises really quickly and understood what they were seeing and what they were doing. This knowledge of was something that was carried over into the beta builds of our app. As we were only able to get one exercise into the app we were, however, able to add elements of the other exercises into this one that was implemented. Because what was prototype was an understandable format to users and the clients, we were to iterate on the interaction in the room and allowed for not only adding items to the room but also the manipulation of fixed items in the room as this fitted with the action that was being asked of the user.

We were testing the usability of the app’s design that we had created at that stage, and seeing what the stakeholder thoughts and got feedback on what was implemented and if they were a suitable way of presenting to the user as intended. This gave as great deal of confidence and info to help develop this app further.

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/design-through-prototype/feed/0IMG_3019acrompton360IMG_3026Screen Shot 2017-04-03 at 2.42.02 pmScreen Shot 2017-04-03 at 2.42.23 pmEthics in games and Ethical design.https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/ethics-in-games-and-ethical-design/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/ethics-in-games-and-ethical-design/#respondWed, 15 Mar 2017 07:50:38 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=3273When designing an interactive experience there are a lot of topics that have to be addressed, but none as important as ethical issues surrounding the topic presented by you through the digital media you trying to create. When we look at serious games and what they actually do for the player, it’s easy to understand how hard it is to account for all ethical mindsets and let alone design for a range of different target audience and markets.

It should always be paramount to approach the game design process, to understand where and when ethics can come into play during your development. Because it will need to be addressed as it will at some stage. Ethics in a day to day interaction is a little easier to address if you are the one dealing with it. In develop, you need to address not only how you see it, but you need to consider other points of view and understanding. This is some we need to be designed for in our app.

Ind.ie is a great little site with some very interesting incites into ethics. Having looked at my own practices and made a small manifesto I found their manifesto on ethical design very helpful.

Ethics will play a part in our projects as we have to evaluate our design. Trying to balance the fun with the reality, our focus and design goals fit these. Critical to our design of a serious or educational experience. Players need to be motivated by the theme of your product, this helps people relate to the context of the app. Hopefully, that you are to make it so people can see and transfers what they get from an experience into their day to day lives.

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is in place to help ethics in the industry. The Code can be found here.

It covers the Principles, ethics in a Workplace and for people in a position of Leadership because ethic is something that only applies to some individuals.

We can draw some relative ethics based game design principles from games Mass Effect titles (2007 – 2017), but these are still predominantly marketed as entertainment and not a serious game, so they have different ethical values.

In mass effect, players have the choice to pick what is right and what is wrong in the context of the game environment. This isn’t complex ethics based design, but it’s understood that players should have their own say in what’s right and wrong within the game world, putting choices into the player’s hands so they can choose based on their own person views and beliefs.

Ethical design is easy to understand, but it’s difficult to apply this to creative work and allow for all the types of individuals that will be interaction with you work. Our development team are approaching the ethical design of this project with an understanding that our product will acknowledge Human Rights, Human Effort, and Human Experience.

Thanks for reading.

]]>https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/ethics-in-games-and-ethical-design/feed/0aaeaaqaaaaaaaam1aaaajdnlztvmytfhlwq5ogutndm0my04zjk2ltg3nzeyzmq0y2nlmaacrompton360download248376Lets Talk Seriously About Games.https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/lets-talk-seriously-about-games/
https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/lets-talk-seriously-about-games/#respondWed, 01 Mar 2017 03:49:56 +0000http://baconman360.wordpress.com/?p=3274So what is a serious game? They are a game that ain’t what most people would think of when you want to have fun. Some serious games are there to entertain as the context is of a serious nature.

Whereas others deliver some form of information or training – “induce some kind of effective or motor learning” (Susi et al. 2007, Breurer & Bente, 2010). Like educational games which set out to help learn about the particular subject matter in a fun and engaging way coined edutainment, these game still have a lot of “game” over learn context. There are education games or material out there are more sold subject matter and less of the game.

These games are all ways of experiencing something new. However, a game about a serious subject matter is different to a game seriously teaching you a subject matter. This is something that I will be focusing on with my current project. I feel that ethics are something that helps differentiate these learning types of games from others.

Ethics comes into play in pretty much anything from content to design and to the individuals making and partaking in a game.

Design

Ind.ie is a great little site with some very interesting incites into ethics. Having looked at my own practices and made a small manifesto I found their manifesto on ethical design very helpful.